


Northern Downpour

by Undercover_Royalty



Series: Not Your Damsel (Series) [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Medical Inaccuracies (probably), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-IW society, bc I LOVE guessing how that would go, poor may, she doesn't deserve this, this just sort of happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 08:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17342144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Undercover_Royalty/pseuds/Undercover_Royalty
Summary: The Decimation has hit, and Evie Alongora must learn to navigate a strange, new world.





	Northern Downpour

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!   
> I just really love Post-IW society, I guess. This is my second go-around with this idea, and so a lot of my ideas from May the Fourth Be With You remain. There is a happier sequel to this fic that is also gonna be posted, as I wrote both over Christmas.   
> I hope to address Evie more via one-shots in the future— they seem to go over much better for me!   
> Thank you all for reading!

It rained a lot, these days. 

Maybe it always had. But given the situation, the world was seeing things it hadn’t seen before, everywhere. So maybe it had rained this much before, but it was just in the spotlight now. 

Evie woke up and didn’t bother to turn the light on. Electricity was rationed now. Everything was rationed. She checked the list beside her bed, a clumsy scrawl of events, then placed it back down. Slowly, silently, she changed into jeans and a t-shirt. As she walked past, she noted that the door just down from hers was ajar and darkened. 

She scoffed, and moved on. 

There were kids playing in the street. It was mostly safe, these days. With the schools still shut down, they often didn’t have much else to do bedsides kick a kickball around their hastily drawn four-square court, pastel chalk bleeding down into the sewer. 

Damage Control hadn’t even gotten to her neighborhood yet. Unsurprisingly, their job went even slower when a vast percentage of the workforce had died. Crumpled cars still dotted the streets, most having been pushed to the sides by irate residents. A telephone pole was dangerously crooked, but still standing. 

Evie finally made it to the bodega seven blocks away. A few other early morning shoppers inhabited the barren aisles, and the teenager weaved through them, perfunctorily. A loaf of bread. A gallon of water. A bag of mixed vegetables that went mushy and soft when heated, and overall tasted like nothing. She waited in the short checkout line, queued up with people mostly carrying the exact same things she was. A baby sobbed in his mother’s arms and it was the loudest sound she’d heard all day. 

She was walking back towards home, bags in hand, eyes consistently alert, when it inevitably happened. A sweaty hand clapped over her mouth, wild blue eyes coming in contact with hers, hot breath against her face. The man before her looked crazed, like he was simultaneously terrified of her and himself all at once. 

“I— my children—“ he protested, voice cracking. 

Evie jerked her hand away, pulling the bags from his reach. Quickly, she kicked his shin with her right foot and he must have been fairly weak already, as he gave out almost immediately, falling to the sidewalk with a little groan. 

“Shops’s that way.” she offered, walking away, “You know, if you even have kids at all.” 

It was hard to tell, these days, who was a sob story and who was exploiting you. Evie was very biased towards exploitation— but then again, she never knew for sure. She did what she had to and that was that. 

She went home for all of three seconds to put the groceries away, and exchanged the bags for a plastic medicine kit, as a taser joined the keys in her front pockets. Then, she was back onto the street. When she had her kit, people moved for her. It was the oddest thing, like she was an alien in their midst. And then, there were the ones that stopped her. Today, it was a gaggle of younger boys wearing little-league soccer jerseys, all talking over each other in a panic as they moved her, like a single entity, back to a side alley. Along the entrance, another boy waited, blood trickling down the side of his head. 

“I’ve got it. It’s okay.” Evie offered. 

The boys crowded her in a semicircle, watching as she knelt to the boy and began to mop away some of the blood with a disinfectant wipe. There was a cut, but it was shallow and long— merely surface bleeding. Once the bleeding had slowed and begun to clot, Evie backed off, tucking the used wipe away. As the boy stared up at her, she handed him two more packaged disinfectant wipes. 

“It should start to scab over soon. Just make sure it stays clean, okay?” she instructed. 

“Yes m’am.” he replied, in a small voice, getting to his feet. 

The boys almost immediately went back to soccer— they tried to get her to play, but she merely punted the ball back to them, needing to move on. 

Dr. Veracruz didn’t expect her to be on time anymore. Like the soccer boys, someone would always need something. Once she arrived, Evie made her rounds: changing sheets, getting food, cleaning up. 

This was the one aspect of her life that hadn't changed. 

Still, there were new events every day. Today, a man was wheeled in, his clothing half-charred. He’d apparently tried to siphon a telephone pole to power his home generator. They had to break out the defibrillator. Evie was stationed down in the ICU, making sure the additional use of power didn’t kick anyone off life support. 

(Mrs. Williams flickered, but stayed firm. She was yet to have a visitor. Evie wondered if the Decimation had left anyone to come). 

Lunch break was taken back in the cafeteria. She sat down the table from some of the returning EMT workers— with limited phone access, stumbling across a life-threatening injury was more about patrolling through areas rather than a call-by-call basis. One of the damage control crews came in and joined them, led by one of those relentless optimists, the kind that made their persistent cheeriness sound fake. The man went on and on about “how hot it was getting” and “oh, but my neighbors found the most wonderful kiddie pool, the little ones love it.” Only his fellow kind really interacted with him. 

The second half of the day was taking patients in the waiting room. This, in essence, just meant that Evie had to keep them calm until someone could take a spare moment and get them to the back. She sat behind the front desk, mediating chaos. There was a birth, which was interesting. The hospital had been very one-dimensional, lately. It was nice to hear tears of joy, rather than pain, echoing down the hall a few hours later. 

Finally, at five, Evie’s alarm went off. She shifted with another of the volunteers— nobody had heard from one of the main unit secretaries, Rhonda, which usually meant the worst. The teenager went back out, medical case in hand. She didn’t go home.

Queens looked about as decimated as Brooklyn. It was fairly indistinguishable these days, anyways. A gathering of newspapers scuttled underfoot as she walked down the middle of Queens Boulevard. There were people along the way, bleeding, broken-boned, usually revealed by concerned family members asking for her help. Evie helped those she knew how to treat, improvised for those she didn't, and ran out of supplies three-quarters of the way there. 

Finally, just as the sun was drooping to touch the horizon, Evie arrived at a nondescript apartment complex. She bounded up the squeaking stairs, the empty case thumping against her side, finally emerging on the seventh floor. Dust hung, suspended, all down the hall. Many people had left, if she remembered right, worried over the structural integrity and preferring to stay with friends and family. Evie knew at least one remained. 

May hadn’t locked the door, again. 

Evie pushed into the darkened apartment, past all the pictures she never allowed herself to stare at, back to the sink, where chipped dishes had piled up. She began to scrub them with the drizzle of water the faucet allowed, placing them back in the cupboards in neat stacks. 

That completed, she continued on towards the living room— but stopped, seeing a light down the hall. 

Through the door to _his_ room, Evie found May sitting stock-still, an old hoodie in her hands. Her thumbs traced meaningless circles over its surface. After ensuring she was alright, Evie made to turn around, before she glanced back up to find May’s eyes, wide and wet. 

“He’s just missing.” the woman insisted, softly, fingers curling into the fabric, “Just missing.” 

Evie nodded, not meeting her eyes. 

“Of course, May.” she replied, softly. 

May didn’t respond. Evie wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t even seen her. She went back to the living room— clean up the bottles, cans and tissues, fold the blankets, and she didn’t need to vacuum, Ned had done it yesterday. By the time she made it back to May, the woman had fallen asleep, curled up on the lower bunk, hoodie clutched tightly in one arm. Evie tried to adjust her so she’d be comfortable, and felt a pang, finding the woman’s other hand clutching a ring, suspended on a chain around her neck. She clicked off the light as she left. 

The walk home was longer. Evie felt the weight of the taser, prompting itself to be used. Luckily, tonight was not one of those nights. She got back in, a single lamp informing her of Nonna’s return. The teenager was halfway through restocking her kit, sitting criss-cross on the bathroom floor when the door came open. Evie didn’t bother to look up. 

“Your sister is doing well.” 

Evie nodded, counting out bandages. 

“She’s staying with her roommate, you remember.” 

Another nod. She checked the date on a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, put it aside. 

“She thinks they’ll be able to pool enough gas for her to get here in three months.” 

Evie didn’t bother nodding, this time. Nonna had to be kidding herself if she thought for a second that Maya would make the trek from Florida to New York. Communications had been almost completely cut off. There were likely highway looters, just waiting for a lone college girl like Maya to come cruising through with nothing but a beat-up car and a dream. She figured it was what Nonna needed to believe at the moment, which was okay. Everyone needed to believe in something. 

Finally, with a scoff, the older woman thumped a plastic bag down at Evie’s feet. She looked up. 

“You were getting low on gauze.” Nonna offered, as she walked away. 

Evie’s mouth opened and closed, like she might say something but decided against it. It took her a few more minutes to sort through all her new supplies, adding a tiny suture kit to her case and finally putting everything away. She tucked her case under her bed and went out again, pushing open the creaking door to the balcony, leaning against the rusty railing. 

She used to talk, but didn’t bother anymore. This was the way of the world. And despite the torment and the tears, Evie had a fair suspicion that humanity would survive this crisis, too. If she didn’t exactly want to be a part of this strange, new world every so often, well, neither did most anyone else. 

Evie remembered her parents’ funeral most vividly. It had lasted ten minutes, an on-call preacher stationed at the front, her and Nonna and a few of her parents' work friends sparsely occupying the front rows. The preacher had given a three minute prayer and gotten their full names wrong— Nonna had managed to speak for the remaining seven minutes before there was a shrill beeping from the back of the church and a woman clutching a glowing green stopwatch had ushered them out in favor of the next family. They’d planted government-issued white crosses in the church’s tiny backlot and gone home. 

Evie had been spiraling, then, but now she hung in stasis, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Mom was dead. Dad was dead. Maya was basically unreachable. Peter was… missing. 

Sometimes, Evie wondered if the news was right. Posted bulletins and limited broadcasts insisted that half of all life was gone, everything from plants to people. But if it truly was half, how had Evie still ended up with nothing? 

(She knew it wasn’t the end of her world. She had Nonna. Some people had no one.) 

(Sometimes Evie thought she might prefer no one. It had to be better than living like this, walking on eggshells. She still remembered the horror, the piles of ashes reflected in her Nonna’s eyes. The way she'd looked at her, for an instant, like Evie herself was to blame.) 

The door opened, a gust of cool air against her back. A bony hand settled on her shoulder then dug in, in what was probably meant to be a grounding gesture. 

“He’s gone, chula. Like the rest.” 

Evie glanced back up to the stars. The last remaining light of something long-dead. 

“I know.” 

She lightly shrugged off the hand, brushed past the woman and returned inside. A radio was crackling slightly in between news coverage— they’d finally fixed the nearest radio tower, it seemed. That... that was something. 

Evie took a two-minute shower and changed into her pajamas. Then, while poking through mushy vegetables at her desk, she scrawled out another list. 

1\. Hospital shift   
2\. Flatbush w/kit.   
3\. Abe’s funeral.   
4\. Driving practice w/Nonna

That accomplished, Evie placed the list on her nightstand, ducked under the covers and lied there, watching the moonlight flicker across the room until she fell asleep. 

And at twelve that night, when she jolted awake and leapt out of bed because she swore there was a knock on the window, there was her list, sitting there, reminding her of all that had changed.


End file.
